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Matt Dutile for The New York TimesFrom left, Phyllis Beck, Sheila Goldstein and Wendy Wilson at Ms. Wilson’s Long Island home.

The six women who gathered in Wendy Wilson’s living room in Massapequa, on Long Island, on a Saturday morning — five in person, one on speakerphone from Florida — were talking about dependence and independence, big issues for people ages 75 to 88.

“Am I lucky to have these kids who are aware of my frailty?” asked one member with Parkinson’s disease, whose children have begun to fill weekly pillboxes for her and her husband. “Yes. Does that make me dependent? No.” She sees herself as “allowing them to be kind to me, as I am kind to them.”

“Emotional maturity is not being independent,” said one of the younger members, offering an axiom she heard years ago. “It’s being interdependent.”

The group liked this notion; nods and murmurs traveled around the circle. “She’s smart, for a kid,” someone said.

Ms. Wilson, the clinical social worker and psychoanalyst who leads this monthly discussion (she recorded the most recent, with members’ permission, so that I could listen in), has never called it a therapy group. She refers to it as a workshop. Its official title is Vibrant Seniors, though participants have dubbed it “the oldies group.” Those from generations reared in a more reticent pre-Oprah culture can be notoriously wary of anything that sounds like mental health treatment.

But whatever its name, “I’m working as a therapist when I’m running the group,” Ms. Wilson acknowledged. “And the results are those you’d see in psychotherapy. People are talking about topics they otherwise never would have.”

Joan Black took a serious tumble two years ago, climbing up on a stepladder to reach for a punchbowl. She was about to host one of her frequent patio parties for a regional theater company in Montpelier, Vt.

Ms. Black had been doing quite well in her ground-floor apartment downtown. But the fall broke a vertebra, and since then she’s had trouble walking and standing for any extended period.

Daniel HechtCara Barbero shoveling snow at the home of her neighbor Joan Black.

Once she worked as an interior designer. “I take a great deal of pride in my home,” she told me in an interview. “But I couldn’t keep up with the vacuuming and dusting. I couldn’t garden. I used to start dreading winter in mid-July.” (She couldn’t shovel snow.) Living on Social Security payments since the recession plundered her savings, she couldn’t afford to hire helpers. “Seeing things in my life go downhill became very depressing,” said Ms. Black, now 80.

Happily, a city program called the Reach Service Exchange Network began operation in the fall of 2010, powered by a grant of $1 million from the federal Administration on Aging.

The network functions as a time bank. Montpelier residents of all ages join for $25 and get access to a site listing requests and offers: driving, pet care, reading aloud, help with grocery shopping, computer tutoring sessions and more. “We ask all members to provide services to the network,” explained Daniel Hecht, the network’s director. “We think people of any age or level of ability can contribute.”

On the one hand, some family members clearly dread the new requirement that residents be asked, once each quarter (unless they opt to hear the question annually instead), whether they’d like information on how to move back into “the community.”

I could practically hear Curios from Brooklyn groaning: “How many of us have pleaded, negotiated with our elderly parents to move into a situation where their physical and emotional safety is better cared for?”

And I can almost picture Susan in Washington State nodding vigorously: “It can only cause confusion, anger, and/or other hard feelings if the answer, as can be expected, is ‘Yes!’” A number of commenters also lamented that the very support services required for such transitions — transit, meal delivery, adult day programs — are being cut back in their cities and states.

On Friday afternoon, the federal Administration on Aging unveils its new, improved elder care locator. The major change: anyone who dials the toll-free number, (800) 677-1116, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time on weekdays should get an actual human on the line, ready to answer questions about government services and refer seniors and caregivers to local agencies that can help.

“My strong personal preference is that the best way to provide consumer assistance is in person — face to face, or on the phone,” said Kathy Greenlee, assistant secretary for aging at the federal Department of Health and Human Services. “Talking to someone about a situation, providing direction — there’s no substitute.”

The locator, intended as the first stop for those seeking services for older people in their counties, began as a phone service in 1991 and a decade later added a popular Web site, www.eldercare.gov. It had live operators until two years ago, when it switched to a recorded routing system.

I tried that system myself recently, asking about transportation services in Cumberland County, N.J., where my father lives. It worked reasonably well — I’ve certainly encountered worse automated systems — but some callers might have given up when the system failed, three times, to understand the city and state I kept enunciating as clearly as possible. I punched in my dad’s ZIP code, and that did the trick. I was connected to a person in Bridgeton, N.J., who told me how my father should apply.

“People didn’t get a live voice,” Ms. Greenlee said of the call system. This might explain why only 177,000 people called last year, while 1.9 million used the Web site. Starting Friday, though, five information specialists and two elder care counselors will handle calls in English and Spanish (a separate “language line” will assist those who speak other languages).

The staff can provide general information on Medicare and Medicaid eligibility and benefits, Social Security, food stamps and food delivery services, transportation, long-term care, caregiver support, protection against elder abuse and more.

The Web site is getting an overhaul, too. That new, improved version goes live later this month, exact date to be determined.

One potential shortcoming is that in a majority of cases, callers looking for services will be connected to a local Area Agency on Aging — there are more than 600 around the country — or to one of the more than 300 Aging and Disability Resource Centers that serve both seniors and younger people with disabilities. Whether this new setup is helpful really depends on those local agencies.

In my father’s apartment building in South Jersey, the older tenants start drifting into the small lobby each day around 1 p.m., taking up positions on chairs and couches. The ostensible reason: The mail is about to arrive. The real reason: They relish a chance to schmooze.

“There’s a lot of discussion about the economy,” Dad reports. “And what the president said about the police and that fellow in Massachusetts.” Lesser issues arise, too. Whose daughter is coming to visit. What is on sale at the ShopRite supermarket.

Twenty-five years ago, a University of Wisconsin professor coined a great term for this kind of residence. It is a naturally occurring retirement community, or NORC. The place wasn’t built for seniors; its tenants are all ages, infants through nonagenarians. But a substantial number of residents have been there long enough to grow old together.

Since he still drives, my father heads out each morning to buy the papers, which get passed from one apartment to another. (God forbid you should squander 50 cents for your own copy and read the headlines before suppertime.) He ferries friends to doctors’ appointments. He benefits, too: his pal Manny comes by several times a day to check on him, and neighbors stock his fridge with soup and strudel.

NORCs exist all over; probably half of Miami Beach, Fla., was a NORC at one time. Watching this little community cope with shopping and banking and constant medical visits, I have wondered why services can’t be brought to these residents. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to have a nurse visit weekly, instead of each person making a laborious trip to a doctor’s office? For the senior van to schedule regular excursions to ShopRite? For the high school orchestra to give concerts in the community room, since so few older residents go out after dark? Read more…

Julianne Moore gives a wonderful performance in “Still Alice,” but the film skirts the truth about dementia.Read more…

About

Thanks to the marvels of medical science, our parents are living longer than ever before. Most will spend years dependent on others for the most basic needs. That burden falls to their baby boomer children. The New Old Age blog explored this unprecedented intergenerational challenge. Paula Span will continue to write New Old Age columns twice monthly at nytimes.com/health and the conversation will continue on Twitter (@paula_span) and Facebook.